By Brice Wallace
A Logan company focused on technologies and services that advance and accelerate therapeutics’ development and manufacture will expand in a project that will create 160 high-paying jobs over five years.
Cytiva, whose operation there previously were known as HyClone Laboratories and GE Healthcare Life Sciences, announced the $18.7 million project after being approved for a tax credit of nearly $1.5 million by the Governor’s Office of Economic Development (GOED) board.
Cytiva has more than 500 employees in Logan, where the company produces chemical compounds used in the manufacture and development of pharmaceutical therapies and treatments. The expansion is being prompted in part by demand created by the federal government’s Project Warp Speed, aimed at producing, distributing and administering COVID-19 vaccines.
“We’re growing and really busting at the seams with all of the demand that’s come from normal therapeutics as well as the COVID vaccines,” plant manager Justin Meehan told the GOED board.
“We are busting at the seams. … Buildings are going up. New spaces are being renovated, and obviously the output is significant,” Meehan said, noting that output is up 40 percent from a year earlier as the company’s work for various customers focuses on COVID, Alzheimer’s and cancer therapeutics.
“These kinds of therapeutics that we’re getting in partnership with are bringing a ton of growth and diversity of roles into Cache Valley,” he said.
Cytiva’s customers undertake life-saving activities ranging from fundamental biological research to developing innovative vaccines, biologic drugs, and novel cell and gene therapies. Cytiva supplies the tools and services they need to work better, faster and safer, leading to better patient outcomes. Cytiva manufactures cell culture media for pharmaceutical production and provides services to customer such as research and development and product development.
The Logan operations began as an offshoot of research done by Dr. Rex Spendlove, then a professor at Utah State University, to develop a method to produce a quality fetal bovine serum. HyClone then pioneered many of the serum collection, filtration and processing techniques used by cell culture product manufactures.
The HyClone operations eventually became part of GE Healthcare. A year ago, GOED approved a $254,554 tax credit incentive for GE Healthcare Life Sciences, tied to adding 68 jobs over five years. Danaher Corp. earlier this year completed its acquisition of the biopharma portion of GE Healthcare’s life sciences business and rebranded it as Cytiva, with the HyClone name being retained as one of its brands. Cytiva has more than 7,000 employees in 40 countries.
“We’re extremely excited to about this opportunity to keep this project growing here in Utah,” Thomas Wadsworth, GOED associate managing director, told the GOED board before the incentive vote. “We know that there is both national and international competition for this project, especially as it relates to Danaher’s existing operations around the world, so we’re excited to be able to keep this project here in Utah and hope for more of this type of growth in the future.”
“Everyone in Logan’s happy, and we’re happy,” said Mel Lavitt, chairman of the GOED board’s incentive committee. “It’s another ‘grow Utah’ incentive that we can all be very proud of.”
The new jobs, paying an average of $49,000, will be across the employment spectrum and not just frontline manufacturing teams, Meehan said.
The project is expected to generate wages of nearly $34 million over five years and new state tax revenue of about $9.6 million during that period.
“With this expansion, Cytiva will be able to create more jobs in our manufacturing industry,” Val Hale, GOED’s executive director, said in a prepared statement. “This is great news for our Northern Utah friends in Logan, and we thank Cytiva for choosing to stay in Utah to help grow our local economy.”
“Cytiva is a story of homegrown Utah entrepreneurship attracting national investment that has supported a pattern of steady growth,” said Theresa A. Foxley, president and CEO of the Economic Development Corporation of Utah. “What started as HyClone has expanded successively under GE and now Danaher management, and is a testament to the talented, highly educated workforce in Cache County.”
“Cytiva’s continued growth and excellence in enhancing human health is a testament to the good that can result from one person’s passion for improving the quality of life for mankind,” said Kirk Jensen, economic director for Logan City.
December’s GOED board meeting was the final one for Hale, who is retiring. He will be succeeded by Dan Hemmert, owner and operator of Red Hanger Cleaners, a state senator since 2016 and majority whip since 2018.
